Has anybody heard something? I have dozens of ideas in my mind, and one has to do with translations. So would be nice to know that one day, there will be a "backbone" for such things.

That would be nice indeed. People could build it into their blogging software... I write in English, and I automatically publish in 10 languages. Then again, if the browser could automatically translate content, transparent to the user – e.g. with a Google toolbar feature – then we'd save a lot of storage. I guess that is a CPU vs storage issue – is the translation lightning fast and not heavy on Google's servers? Then Google could offer it as Toolbar feature. Is it a one-time heavy calculation? Then Google might offer it as API with daily request limiit a la 1,000 translations... that'd still be enough for a blogger.

Hmm. Only the Toolbar creates lock-in (towards Google products). Because an API would create content spider-able by all SEs. Only a Toolbar feature would create content just from Google.com :)

Corsin: Out of interest, is this idea for your personal use or would it have commercial value?

I am in a phase, where I think commercial. OpenSource time is behind me now, I grew up ;)

And if there is an API, I sure would pay fees, buy a license.

Corsin: Drop me an email – webmasterruscoe.net

I'd like to discuss this further... :-)

Do you really think automated translation can be good enough to build commercial applications on? I think you must be dreaming (or watching to much SF movies ;-)).

Yep. Automated machine translation has its uses – particularly where the content being translated is well written and the volume means that professional translation isn't an option. And if you merge that with translation memory and a human reviewer where necessary, you probably wouldn't even notice the difference...

Yeah they just luanched a deveice that has over 50K english words and 40K Arabic words for the On the field Guys who are playing battlegames :)-

so its very much a reality that translation devices /methods are needed.